Rita Levi Montalcini
To weep is to make less the
depth of grief.
William Shakespeare
The cult of perfection
always leads to preferring myth to authenticity.
Paul Ariès
Not good for the
image of the accounting profession: "Taxes are for
Douche Bags"
July 6, 2005 message from Mike Gasior
[Mike_Gasior@mail.vresp.com]
Also, I told you last month about a hysterical video that was done on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart by correspondent, Ed Helms about the Cayman Islands titled "Gimmie Shelter". Unfortunately Comedy Central had taken the clip off of their website, but a terrific reader sent me a link where you can view the video. Simply cut and paste this address into your browser and the video will play for you. Enjoy.
Mike
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting humor are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#Humor
From the T.H.E. Newsletter on July 6, 2005
Dell, Microsoft Launch Search for America's Education Visionaries
Dell and Microsoft® Corp. have partnered to launch a search to find the top K-12 education visionaries in the United States. Selected by a panel of distinguished judges, the winners each will receive $250,000 in technology and services for their schools to help them achieve their educational vision.The companies are calling for educators to submit essays detailing how technology could transform education and help their students prepare for the future. Winners will be announced at Dell's Global Education Day in early 2006, where they will be given the opportunity to share their vision of education and technology to education stakeholders from around the world.
For the full story, visit http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2004/2005_06_28_rr_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp
I shortened the above URL to http://snipurl.com/EducationVisionaires
Pay to get Your FICO
Scores, but don't trust offers from vendors promising
help to get you a free credit report or FICO score
Your FICO credit score is crucial to your credit to
your good name. It can be altered without your
knowing it due to fraud and errors. Getting a free
credit report may not give you a FICO scores as well.
The
main advantage of the
from
http://www.myfico.com/ is that it will give you your
FICO score from each of the three major credit reporting
agencies. Consumer Reports (August, Page 18) notes that
credit scores nearly always differ between the three
major credit reporting agencies. You may miss something
if you only get one agency’s score.
To monitor your FICO score, Consumer Reports (August 2005, Page 17) recommends that you get the $44.85 package from http://www.myfico.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on FICO scores are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm
In particular go to
file:///W:/users/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#FICO
FTC helpers in getting your credit report and FICO score --- http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/credit/index.html
A good FTC site is at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/02/top102005.htm
FTC helpers if suspect someone else has become you --- http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/idtsummary.pdf
FTC helpers in getting your credit report and FICO score --- http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/credit/index.html
IBook and PowerBook G4 Fire Risk
The Consumer Product Safety
Commission announced Friday that Apple Computer is
recalling a rechargeable battery used in its iBook G4
and PowerBook G4 computers, due a risk of overheating
and fires. The commission's statement said Apple is
recalling about 128,000 of the batteries sold in the
United States. It said the computer maker has received
six reports worldwide of batteries overheating due to an
internal short, including two U.S. reports. The
batteries are made by LG Chem Ltd., of South Korea. The
batteries are used in the 12-inch iBook G4, the 12-inch
PowerBook G4 and the 15-inch PowerBook G4. The recalled
batteries include those with model numbers A1061, A1078
and A1079 and serial numbers that begin with HQ441
through HQ507 or 3X446 through 3X510. The model and
serial numbers labeled on the bottom of the battery,
which can be read when the battery is removed from
computers.
"Apple recalls laptop batteries: Computer maker
recalls rechargeables in iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 due
to overheating, fire risk," CNN Money, May 20,
2005 ---
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/20/technology/personaltech/apple_recall/
A new accounting ethics blog ---
http://www.accountingethics.blogspot.com/
July 5, 2005 message from Art Berkowitz ---
ArtBCPA@aol.com
I thought you might be interested in my recent postings on accounting ethics at my new blog site:
1. Can We Really Have Independent Auditors?
2. The Innocence of Arthur Andersen? Nothing Could be Further from the Truth.
Hot Tips from Consumer Reports
Haagen-Dazs low-fat ice cream is a good as the fat-filled kind according to Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 7.
Inexpensive luggage won't stand up to airline abuse according to Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 8
Cell phone TV is not ready for prime time according to Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 8.
The OneTouch (from UltraSmart) is the best blood-glucose monitor according to Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 8.
For that power flush, go for the Eljer Titan 091-0777 toilet, Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 33.
Sealy Bet Fit is the way to go for cotton bed sheets according to Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 37.
Don't expect your (possibly new) analog TV to work after the digital-only signal commences (Congress is now considering a date of December 31, 2008). You may not be able to watch the January 1, 2009 bowl games unless you replace your analog TV before then. The millions of TV sets that will be trashed in the next three years will become a huge environmental risk. See Consumer Reports, August 2005, Page 61 .
Thanks but no thanks: Income taxes may make
you turn down the big prize you won
The contest's fine print
explains that winners must pay federal and state income
taxes, where applicable, on American's "approximate
retail value" of the 12 round-trip tickets for two,
which the airline valued at $52,800, or $2,200 per
ticket. Jack McCall, a New York resident who won
American's grand prize in the video category by
submitting a video montage of snapshots he and his wife
collected during their travels around the world,
estimates that federal, state and local taxes on the
prize could amount to roughly $19,000, given the
couple's probable federal tax bracket and because they
live in New York City, where income taxes are high.
That's equivalent to about $800 for each of the 24
tickets.
Melanie Trottman and Ron Lieber, "Contest Winner
Declines 'Free' Airline Tickets, The Wall Street
Journal, July 6, 2005; Page B1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112061365613778106,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
Question
What is fraudulent "pretexting?"
Answer
"AICPA Warns of Possible Pretexting Calls,"
AccountingWeb, June 28, 2005 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101050
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defines “pretexting” as the practice of getting personal information under false pretenses. Pretexters will use a variety of excuses in an attempt to gain personal information. Once they obtain the personal information they are seeking, they may sell it to people who will use it for identity theft or use it themselves to investigate or stalk an individual. Some personal information is a matter of public record, including home- or property-ownership, real estate taxes and whether a person or firm has ever filed for bankruptcy. It is not pretexting to collect this type of information.
It is, however, illegal for anyone to obtain customer information from a financial institution or a customer of a financial institution by:
- using false, fictitious or fraudulent statements
- using forged, counterfeit, lost or stolen documents
- asking a third person to get someone else’s information using false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or forged, counterfeit, lost or stolen documents.
Human resources experts advise that a business must disclose certain information in order to verify employment history. Because laws governing what an employer can and cannot say about employees are often complex, it is recommended all calls requesting personal information be transferred to a representative of the human resources or personnel departments when they cannot be transferred directly to the person that is being inquired about. Firms receiving calls from suspect “AICPA employees” are also asked to contact Jay Rothberg, AICPA Vice President at jrothberg@aicpa.org .
Bob Jensen's threads on computing and networking security are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
At last there's a serious alternative to Windows
other than a Mac operating system
Novell Inc.'s
SuSE Linux Professional 9.3
desktop gives not only other leading Linux desktop
distributions like Xandros a run for their money, but
also enterprise desktops such as Windows XP Pro. Nat
Friedman, vice president of Linux desktop engineering at
Novell, said, "We are getting ahead of Windows for the
first time." After kicking SLP 9.3's tires, I agree.
This is one impressive desktop distribution. It has
every Linux application that anyone is ever likely to
want and it's all tied together with either a slick and
up-to-date KDE or GNOME interface.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, "Bleeding-Edge Linux Desktop:
SuSE Linux Professional 9.3," eWeek, July 5, 2005
---
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1833908,00.asp
Staggering trends in hedge fund investing
(Hedge funds are not investment hedges. They
are risky investment clubs.)
July 6, 2005 message from Mike Gasior
[Mike_Gasior@mail.vresp.com]
To be truthful, some of the statistics I have observed in the past few months have been staggering. Let me share a few of them with you:
--On an average day, between 18% and 22% of ALL trading on the New York Stock Exchange is hedge fund related.
--On an average day, between 30% and 35% of ALL trading on the London Stock Exchange is hedge fund related.
--It is estimated that in excess of 75% of quoted, convertible bonds are now held by hedge funds.
What has also been remarkable are the types of investors who I have personally observed putting their money into hedge funds. Sometimes with less than stellar results too. I was just in Bermuda last week and read an article in The Royal Gazette about the Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation managing to lose $215 million in a hedge fund that only invested in U.S. Treasury securities. If you cannot help but wonder how one manages to lose $215 million in U.S. Treasuries, you might find it even MORE interesting that the Bureau of Worker's Compensation had only invested a total of $225 million in the fund in the first place, so the loss is actually an unfathomable 95% of their total investment. Welcome to the world of extreme leverage and to the world of hedge funds where performance numbers tend to be eye popping whether the numbers are positive or negative ones.
Also see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/business/yourmoney/03view.html?
You can read more about hedge funds under the H-Terms
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm#H-Terms
Asia: Soothing Education's Culture Shock
Mengjia "Victoria" Zhuang, a
29-year-old MBA student from Shanghai, China, will never
forget her first day in strategy class at the University
of Southern California Marshall School of Business. In
the middle of her first case discussion, Zhuang was
struggling to keep up. Suddenly, the teacher looked
directly at her and posed the question, "What would you
do if you were CEO of this company?"
Jeffrey Gangemi, "Soothing Culture Shock: For
international students coming to the U.S., starting
B-school can be a real jolt. Here are some tips for
getting acclimated, Business Week, July 1,
2005 ---
http://snipurl.com/AsiaJuly1
See your long-distance friends in 3-D
Google Earth, a new, free
download from the Mountain View, Calif., firm, takes the
Google Maps service into multiple dimensions. Instead of
presenting top-down views of maps or satellite photos,
this software (based on a program called Keyhole that
Google bought last October) wraps those high-resolution
satellite photos on a three-dimensional model of our
planet's land surface that recreates every molehill and
mountain, then lets you eyeball the scenery from any
angle you wish.
Rob Pegoraro, "Google Earth: Officially All Over the
Map," The Washington Post, July 3, 2005 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/02/AR2005070200115.html?referrer=email
July 7, 2005 message in Information Week Daily
The question we asked was this: "As Microsoft and Google increasingly compete, which company do you think will develop the most innovative software in the next couple of years?" As a self-selecting survey of Web-site visitors, the results aren't scientific, but they're interesting nonetheless. The surprising thing isn't so much that Google scored higher--we might have anticipated that given Google's momentum--but that Microsoft was favored by four of 10 people. Maybe there's hope for Bill Gates' crew, after all.
For evidence of how it's playing out, look no further than Google's decision last week to publicly release the API to Google Maps and other code it developed using the Ajax programming tools. The best Microsoft could do was pledge support for Ajax in the form of a future development tool code-named Atlas.
Google has been getting attention of late for its Google Maps street-mapping application and Google Earth database of satellite images. It's worth remembering, though, that Microsoft was years ahead of Google in both areas, with its MapPoint software and Terra Server database. So software innovation is part perception, part reality, and advantages generally aren't long lasting.
John Foley jpfoley@cmp.com
www.informationweek.com
Telling Computers How to Keep Secrets
The home version of Windows XP
(unlike Apple's two most recent Mac OS X releases) can't
lock up your important data, but other developers have
come up with tools for this task. You just have to
decide which of these three qualities is most important
to you: simplicity, price or capabilities. The
easiest data-protection software we tested was Steganos
Safe 8 (Win 2000 or newer, $30 at
http://www.steganos.com/
). It creates a "secure drive," an encrypted,
password-protected file that houses whatever files you
choose to put in it. When the secure drive is unlocked,
it works just like a regular drive, but when locked, it
turns into a single file filled with encrypted
gibberish.
Kevin Savetz, "Telling Computers How to Keep Secrets,"
The Washington Post, July 3, 2005 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/02/AR2005070200116.html?referrer=email
Bob Jensen's threads on computing and networking security are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
AOL to offer users more services, control
In Wednesday's deal, America
Online, a unit of Time Warner Inc., plans to include
Plaxo's personal information management tools in free
upgrades of AOL's core Web services and its AIM instant
messaging system. The goal is to keep 40 to 50 million
active AOL and AIM members current on the ever-changing
personal details of friends and associates by giving AOL
users and their contacts greater control over how their
personal data is shared.
Eric Auchard, "AOL to offer users more services,
control," The Washington Post, July 6, 2005 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070600437.html?referrer=email
Forwarded by Scott Bonacker on July 5, 2005
F-Secure has examples of both real and bogus "Click here" for crucial updates -- with link body and link content that don't match.
http://f-secure.com/weblog/
Computer Associates - real
http://supportconnect.ca.com actually points to
http://maestro.ca.com ..
eBay
http://signin.ebay.com .. actually points to
http://www.ebay-profileupdate.com ...
RSA - real
http://2005.rsaconference.com .. actually points to
http://rsasecurity1.rsc03.net ...
Microsoft
MS05-039 actually points to
worm generated link
Scott Bonacker, CPA
Springfield, Missouri
July 5, 2005 message from Brigham Young University's Cameron Earl [cameronearl@byu.edu]
Bob,
Its been a while since we have spoken/ emailed. I hope you are doing well. I noticed on your thread that you do not have our updated information- namely our website. Norm Nemrow and I have developed a new website that explains more about our CDs and the teaching model we use at BYU. You may find interesting. In fact, we would love some feedback if you have the time to look at it. The site is brand new and still has one more round of editing (i.e., correcting typos and such) Norm values your opinion greatly. Just thought I would let you know about it. Feel free to share it with others.
Take care
Cameron Earl
Jensen Comment
I added Cameron's update to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
One important feature of the BYU approach to video
learning is the ability to speed up the video when
students want to change the pace in learning reviews.
Also note that David Cottrell from BYU participated in Amy Dunbar's education technology workshop prior to the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting in Hawaii --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf
Bill C-198 in Ontario and Sarbanes-Oxley in the
U.S.: Are these laws really changing the culture?
As much as senior executives
hate to deal with new legislation such as Bill C-198 in
Ontario and Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S. -- or with the
compliance issue as a whole -- they also really need to
focus on what benefits can come from putting their
business under scrutiny, says Lynn Brewer, the
high-profile whistle-blower who helped expose Enron five
years ago.
"Enron Whistle-blower Says Business Landscape Hasn't
Improved," SmartPros, July 1, 2005 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x48760.xml
Creative accounting is alive and well
Unlike mercy, the quality of earnings can be
strained. As they await companies' second-quarter
results, investors may want to remind themselves that
there is often a gulf between the profit figures that
get trotted out in analysts' reports and the financial
news media and the profits recorded under generally
accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. During the last
recession, companies took big charges for layoffs, plant
closings and the like -- all of which cut into their
earnings under GAAP. But many companies preferred that
investors focus on what earnings might have looked like
if the bad things hadn't happened, contending that these
"operating" profits figures better represented their
underlying business. Wall Street acquiesced. In 2001 and
2002, GAAP earnings for companies in the Standard &
Poor's 500-stock index came to less than 60% of
operating earnings.
Justin Lahart, "As They Like It," The Wall Street
Journal, July 6, 2005; Page C1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112060828373077969,00.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
German Labor Union Scandal
A bribery scandal at Volkswagen
AG is shining a light on corporate Germany's traditional
power-sharing arrangement with organized labor.
Prosecutors in the German state of Lower Saxony are
looking into whether Volkswagen officials paid bribes to
some of the company's top labor leaders as a way of
securing their cooperation during recent contract
negotiations, an official with the prosecutor's office
confirmed yesterday. The disclosure, coming less than a
week after the unexpected resignation of a top labor
leader at VW, has triggered a media storm in Germany,
where Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his ruling Social
Democratic Party are in danger of being thrown from
office by voters angry about the country's unemployment
rate, which stood at 11.6% in May, a near-record in the
post-World War II era.
Stephen Power and David Crawford, "VW's Scandal Carries
Fallout: Labor Ills Shed Light On Germany's Rigid
Power-Sharing Law," The Wall Street Journal, July
6, 2005, Page A2 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112060335081577794,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
Wanted: More minorities in the CPA
profession
For an industry focused on the
veracity of numbers, one in particular has prompted a
bit of soul-searching: Only 1 percent of CPAs in the
United States are black, and the numbers for Hispanics
and other minorities are similarly low . . . The Big
Four, as well as a few of the major black-owned
accounting firms, are helping pay for the event at the
Westfields Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in
Chantilly. They also are providing speakers and mentors
who offer tips on how to network, how to deal with
bosses and career pitfalls, and, crucially, how to pass
the CPA exam. Similar to the bar exam for lawyers, the
CPA test qualifies people to, for example, perform
certified audits. "Studying for the exam is crucial,"
said Allen Boston, Ernst & Young's director of campus
and diversity recruiting, imploring his firm's "Staff 1"
employees, those who have started their accounting
careers but have yet to take the test.
"Accounting Firms Seek to Diversify Image," SmartPros,
June 30, 2005 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x48752.xml
For a more detailed analysis, go to "African American Students and the CPA Exam," by Quinton Booker, Journal of Accountancy, May 2005 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2005/booker.htm
Wanted: Less dysfunctional Rap
First, the panelists
expressed dismay at the way commercially successful
rappers like 50 Cent, the Game, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and
Nelly depict young black men. In countless song lyrics
and videos, young men are either embittered losers
despairing on the street corner (or cell block), or
extravagant winners disporting themselves in surreal
mansions or tropical paradises, amid harems of sexy,
available, and highly disposable young women. Some songs
and videos are more offensive than others, but all
reduce manhood to the pursuit of cash, followed by sex,
in a world that requires no responsibility of any kind,
least of all that of fatherhood.
Martha Bayles, "Some of Rap's Fathers Start Taking
Responsibility," The Wall Street Journal, July 6,
2005; Page D10 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112060019580877742,00.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal
July 6, 2005 message from Glen Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]
The world is truly becoming flat.
I found this article in yesterday’s WSJ very interesting…
Need Help With Calculus? Tutors Coach U.S. Students Online -- From India
By CRIS PRYSTAY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL July 5, 2005; Page A11
NEW DELHI -- Tanu Basu lives in Boston, but when she wants extra coaching in math, the 16-year-old American gets online and spends an hour reviewing calculus with an Indian teacher who is based in a suburb of this teeming metropolis.
"It's great. I can log in on my free time, whenever I want," says Ms. Basu. "Sometimes my tutor has to explain something four times, and I just feel I'm this dumb person on the other side of the world, and he's all 'No, that's OK.' "
Enter the next phase of outsourcing: online math education. Not only does the U.S. increasingly lag behind other countries on international math scores, it's also short of qualified math teachers. This could make it tough for America to improve its grade and retain the competitive edge that keeps good jobs at home.
Rest of article at http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112052870627477026,00-search.html?
July 7, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen
Part of the fundamental problem lies in the dearth of role models who promote learning even if they themselves failed along the way. Many of the 19th Century immigrants and freed slaves insisted on their children's education that they themselves were denied. They would not much care where the tutors came from as long as good tutors and teachers were available. They viewed their parenting role as one of love mixed with discipline and motivation and responsibility.
Wanted by the Educational Testing Service:
More IT learning among youth
The Information and
Communication Technology Assessment, as the test is
known, can be scored individually and colleges can
receive aggregate scores. The test was first announced
last year, but a number of changes have been made based
on early administrations of the exam. Terry Egan,
project manager for the test for ETS, said that the exam
grew out of a sense among educators that there is more
than a “digital divide,” but a “proficiency divide” in
which students “have access to technology, but don’t
know how to use it.”
Scott Jaschik, "More Than IM and MP3," Inside Higher
Ed, July 6, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/07/06/ets
Some researchers dream of capturing the attention of Congress. Sandra Murray and Edward Wasserman wish a certain Texas Congressman had never heard of them.Murray, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Wasserman, the Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Iowa, had their studies singled out when the House of Representatives voted last month to approve an appropriations bill for the National Institutes of Health.
Scott Jaschik, "Blacklisted Professors," Inside Higher Ed, July 6, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/07/06/nih
A for effort, C for attendance
According to the students,
the less they were taught, the better. But I knew
better. And I had been on the receiving end of some of
these half-taught students. One of my colleagues at a
large community college in California had confessed that
he passed any student who would sit through his course.
With no work to grade them, he simply gave them all C’s.
He was not the only one, I realized.
Shari Wilson, "Rip-Off," Inside Higher Ed, July 6, 2005
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/07/06/wilson
A hang nail can get you disability pay in Holland
If there were a poster
child for the need for economic reform in Europe, the
Netherlands' disability benefit system would surely be a
finalist for the job. Some one million people -- out of
a work force of 7.6 million -- collect disability
benefits in Holland. This is not because the Dutch
are injury-prone or because the Netherlands is a
dangerous place to live and work. It is an open secret
in Holland that the standards for disability are loose
and often abused. Employers have been known to "retire"
people to the disability system to get them off their
payrolls. The extensive use of the disability system has
also helped keep unemployment statistics relatively low
by European standards, although the official figure has
topped 7% during the current protracted recession.
"The Disabled Dutch," The Wall Street Journal, July 6,
2005 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112059718274977678,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Some of your students may be motivational drug
addicts
But there is an aspect of
prescription drug abuse mentioned only briefly in the
report: ingesting to excel, not rebel. There's now a
hypermotivational syndrome, use of prescription drugs
not to escape the commanding heights of education and
the economy but to attain them.
Ed Tenner, "Hypermotivational Syndrome," MIT's
Technology Review, August 2005 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/08/issue/megascope.asp?trk=nl
In this age of technology, what is "Operations Research" and where does it stand today? --- http://www.scienceofbetter.org/
A cell phone that does it all
This next generation of hybrid
phones will have cameras with up to 2 megapixels of
resolution and music players offering up to 4 GB of
storage -- and it's all on one phone no bigger than an
Apple iPod. Throw in a digital assistant, wireless
Internet capabilities and a game or two and all you're
missing is the tiny scissors.
Ryan Kim, "A cell phone that does it all: New
models to combine music player, Web access, higher-res
camera, PDA," San Francisco Chronicle, July 4,
2005 ---
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/04/BUGP2DI5NM1.DTL&type=tech
|
||
Climate Change McCarthyism.--- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-07-06-05.htm
Also see John Brignell's site at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number watch.htm
From the T.H.E. Newsletter on July 6, 2005
Strayer University Offers Pioneering Virtual Commencement Ceremony
Strayer University announced its 2005 virtual commencement ceremony is available on http://online.strayer.edu/Grad_05/home.asp . The virtual commencement ceremony provides Strayer University's online graduates with an online ceremony that complements their experience in Internet classes.In the 2005 virtual commencement ceremony, Strayer University graduates are greeted with a traditional rendering of "Pomp and Circumstance" while viewing their names and degrees, which appear in a diploma format on the computer screen. Graduates navigate through opening remarks, student biographies, pictures of classmates, and hear keynote speaker Michael Daniels.
For the full story, visit http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050620/clm040.html?.v=13
Eating the Lotus: Make your retirement dollars stretch further and longer
"Paradise Found: Where to Retire Abroad," by Ellen Florian Kratz, Fortune, July 11, 2005, pp. 102-106 --- http://www.fortune.com/fortune/investorguide/articles/0,15114,1076994,00.html
- San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina
- Dubrovnik, CroatiaBoquete, Panama
- Merida, Mexico
- Phuket, Thailand
Latest Jon Stewart videos ---
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/headlines/index.jhtml?playVideo=15782